Aug 10, 2012 |
Waiting for Rain
In the midst of this heatwave,
My cats are drinking ice water
And I’m keeping all windows and blinds closed.
It makes it darker. It makes it cozier.
And it makes it almost okay to listen to
What I call “Autumn” music:
Those tunes by Diana Krall and Harry Connick, Jr.
That bring to mind Autumn in New York
Crisp leaves, caramel apples, and Central Park.
In the midst of this heatwave,
Dot is far away
Camping in the Sierras
And sending daily reports
of amazing photos and adventures
That don’t involve heat stroke.
In the midst of this heatwave,
The house is still getting clean
and organized
But not as fast as I’d like.
I’m watching more television
than usual
and I’m now caught up
on the junk they call “news”.
My checkbook is balanced
but the paperwork is scattered
And I think I’ll get more done
at midnight
when it finally cools down
to a balmy 85 degrees
But that is finally when
the cats and I
decide
to fall asleep
And dream
of cooler days.
First Morning
And Frankly, My Dear… that’s all she wrote!
Jul 13, 2012 |
These are more photos I took on the hottest day we’ve had so far this year. My flower seeds have finally taken root (no pun intended, but there it is!). Fred is definitely getting ready to produce a harvest of Beefsteak tomatoes. And around the yard are other signs of life. Even Dot and a cat or two got in on the photography session!
I like trying different types of photography: Using natural lighting to change the tones and textures. Changing the object of focus to bring other objects into view instead.
And Frankly, My Dear… that’s all she wrote!
Jul 12, 2012 |
See that? That’s a Photo Grab I took from Weather.com in the middle of the afternoon. Ridiculous, isn’t it? And that’s not the worst of it. It actually got hotter! It reached 107 at my house today. In fact, I started writing this at 7:15 p.m. Wednesday evening, and it was still 105.
Some of my friends who live about five miles away as the crow flies are reporting temperatures as high as 112! The weather report has said today should be the worst of it. Along with slightly cooling temperatures, we’re also now in the running for a few isolated thunderstorms. While thunderstorms are fantastic entertainment, out here they’re dangerous.
Lightning ignites too-dry brush and wild shrubbery. Rain sits atop drought-parched land and instead of soaking in, causes the all-too-familiar flash floods. Either situation is generally a cause for alarm out here, but to have both… no wonder we’re in the midst of a Special Weather Warning. It’s supposed to run for several days.
It’s sometimes hard to live in a place where humidity is so absent that even 5% can make you feeling like you’re swimming in a vat of Jell-O. But once the rain actually falls, there’s this great smell… it settles the dust, and there’s just this smell of dirt and sand and water and pollen and… it’s wonderful. The trees are greener. The shrubs and flowers are fresher. It’s the kind of smell that makes me sit out in my PJs in the early morning, and let the rain drop into my coffee as I take it all in.
Yeah. I’m hoping these are those kinds of clouds.
But before the clouds came in, we had sun. And heat. And a lot of it.
And since our Beach Trip was postponed, and we had nothing planned for the day, in the middle of the hottest moment of this heatwave, we decided to try something I haven’t done in about 20 years.
We tried to fry an egg on the driveway.
Because the driveway has a slight slope, once Dot cracked the egg, it ran a bit.
Five minutes later, it looked the same.
It wasn’t really hot enough to fry an egg. So Dot decided to take a stick and scramble it.
I did another little science experiment and put one ice cube directly on the pavement and a cup of cubes next to it to see if they’d melt at the same rate. They did!
The ice melted. The egg didn’t cook.
But the clouds are coming in, and we had a lovely sunset.
And Frankly, My Dear… that’s all she wrote!
